DOING LIFE

PRISONER OF WORK - Thursday, 6 April 2006

'The law firm AlexanderCox's PA and Bookkeeper'

If you ever wondered where I was hiding from 9 to 5, Monday to Fridays - this is it! This is where I work for a salary to support my scrapbooking passion and addiction!

I started this position in February 2002 and is still at it after 4 years. My boss, Campbell Alexander really confuses everyone with his name being a surname as well - and then the firm's name, AlexanderCox is also two surnames. Surnames lurk everywhere.

The firm does specialised litigation and is one of a handful of law firms in South Africa which utilises a Canadian computer program called Summation which uses coded scanned images of all documentation required for a case. This system eliminates hard copy documents (which can be volumenous) in court. Images of documents can instead be viewed on a screen in court .

Interesting tidbits

• office hours 8am-4:30pm (lunch between 1-2pm)
• radio/background music banned (this was a hard one)
• smoking prohibited
• tea times 10am and 3pm (self-service)
• boss gets tea in teapot with cup and saucer on tray as well as 2 to 3 biscuits - served in his office
• office situated in lush green surroundings of Kloof, Durban, KZN
• resident monkey troop occasionally leaps through office windows - grabbing brightly coloured highlighter pens - in the hope that it might be brightly coloured fruit
• a gracious pair of woolley necked storks frequents the natural water stream in front of the office building - in search of juicy frogs
• hi-tech security system with closed circuit tv monitoring - digging for diamonds a rarity
• the closest one gets to something with colour is the office door (see pic)
• closest thing to creativity is cutting labels for the spine of lever arch files (see pic)

- monkey at work signing off